The British Parliament: Origins and development - Курсовая работа

МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ РЕСПУБЛИКИ БЕЛАРУСЬ Учреждение образования «Гомельский государственный университет имени Франциска Скорины» Факультет иностранных языков Кафедра теории и практики английского языка Курсовая работа The British Parliament: Origins and Development Исполнитель: Билизек М.О. Преподаватель Полевая К.В. Гомель 2013 Contents Introduction 1. The Beginnings of Parliament 1.1 The Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot 1.2 The King’s Feudal Council - Curia Regis 1.3 Magna Carta 1.3.1 Struggle for the Limitation of the King’s Power 1.3.2 Magna Carta and the Decline of Feudalism 1.4 Summoning of the First Elected Parliament in 1265 1.5 The “Model Parliament” of Edward I (1295) 2. The Development of Parliament in the Late Middle Ages 2.1 Splitting into the Two Houses in the 14th Century 2.2 The War of the Roses and the Beginning of Tudor Absolutism 2.3 Government and Society in the 14th - 15th Centuries 2.3.1 Social Structure 2.3.2 The Growth of Parliamentary Power in the 14th - 15th Centuries 2.4 Tudor Absolutism and the Decline of Parliament 2.4.1 The Age of Henry VII Tudor’s Reign (1485-1509) 2.4.2 Tudor Parliaments in the 16th Century 3. Stuart Parliaments in the 17th Century 3.1 Social Structure 3.2 The Growth of Contradictions between the Crown and Parliament 3.2.1 The Age of James I Stuart’s Reign (1603-1625) 3.2.2 The Age of Charles I Stuart’s Reign (1625-1649) 3.3 The Bourgeois Revolution (1640-1653) 3.3.1 The Parliament Opposition against the King 3.3.2 The Civil War (1642-1645) 3.3.3 The Struggle within the Parliament Party 3.3.4 The Civil War of 1648. The Establishment of the Republic 3.4 Republican Britain and Cromwell’s Dictatorship (1649-1660) 3.5 The Restoration of the Monarchy in Britain (1660-1688) 3.5.1 The First Political Parties - the Whigs and the Tories 3.5.2 The Glorious Revolution of 1688 4. The Modern British Parliament 4.1 The British Parliament Today 4.2 The House of Commons 4.3 The House of Lords 4.4 The Work of Parliament Conclusion Bibliography Introduction Parliament is one of the oldest and most honored parts of the British government. Its name, from the French word “parler” (“to talk”), was given to meetings of the English king’s council in the middle of the 13th century. Its immediate predecessor was the king’s feudal council, the Curia Regis, and before that the Anglo-Saxon Witenagemot. It was a device resorted to by the medieval kings to help them in running their governments and reflected the idea that the king should consult with his subjects. In the 13th century, King Edward I (1272-1307) called joint meetings of two governmental institutions: the Magnum Concilium, or the Great Council, comprising lay and ecclesiastical magnates, and the Curia Regis, or King’s Court, a much smaller body of semiprofessional advisers. At those meetings of the Curia Regis that came to be called “concilium regis in parliamento” (“the king’s council in parliament”), judicial problems might be settled that had proved beyond the scope of the ordinary law courts dating from the 12th century. The members of the Curia Regis were preeminent and often remained to complete business after the magnates had been sent home; the proceedings of Parliament were not formally ended until they had accomplished their tasks. To about one in seven of these meetings Edward I summoned knights and burgesses to appear with the magnates. The Parliament called in 1295, known as the Model Parliament and widely regarded as the first representative parliament, included the lower clergy for the first time as well as two knights from each county, two burgesses from each borough and two citizens from each city. Early in the 14th century the practice developed of conducting debates between the lords spiritual and temporal in one chamber, or “house”, and between the knights and burgesses in another. Strictly speaking, there were, and still are, three houses: the king and his council, the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons. But in the 15th century the kings of the House of Lancaster were usually forced to take all their councilors from among the lords, and later under the House of Tudor, it became the practice to find seats in the commons for privy councilors who were not lords. Meanwhile, the greater cohesion of the Privy Council achieved in the 14th century separated it in practice from Parliament, and the decline of Parliament’s judicial function led to an increase in its legislative activity, originating now not only from royal initiative but by petitions, or “bills”, framed by groups within Parliament itself. Bills, if assented to by the king, became acts of Parliament; eventually, under King Henry VI (1422-1461; 1470-1471), the assent of both Houses - the House of Lords (a body now based largely on heredity) and the House of Commons - was also required. Under the Tudors, though it was still possible to make law by royal proclamation, the monarchs rarely resorted to such an unpopular measure, and all major politic